As told to Jeannette Batz Cooperman
Photograph by Mark Gilliland
“My mother’s father was the chief justice of Eritrea,” says Mengesha Yohannes, “and my father was an Ethiopian nobleman.” Yohannes talks passionately about the war between their countries—“all that blood, all that waste”—but doesn’t mention that his great-great-grandfather was Yohannes IV, emperor of Ethiopia, whose death allowed the Italians to create Eritrea. Yohannes left the old ways behind—the formality, the expectations—when he came here for college. He’d planned on med school but wound up part owner of Bar Italia, healing in lighter ways—but with no less intensity.
A restaurant needs a soul. A theme—not necessarily an explicit one, but something that pulls it all together.
I look at how the menu is constructed. If people don’t come away with a sense of what the inspiration is, it’s just one more “eclectic” restaurant. Tell me what altar you are worshipping at.
The Italian aesthetic is very direct. You let the food and wine speak for themselves.
Too much handling is, in the Italian vernacular, the equivalent of an overly stilted manner of speaking. Big words obscure the meaning.
Italy colonized my country; I colonized Italian cuisine.
I eat for sport.
We had a coffee plantation. There were always people visiting and staying over—for months and sometimes years.
My dad came from an aristocratic background, so in a lot of what he had to do, he had no choice. I didn’t understand, until he died, the scale of these things.
I had my own keys to the school library—and to the biology lab, and to the chemistry lab. I was such a nerd.
I worked at the Parkmoor in college and learned about American culture. There were folks who had worked there for decades, and it was a soap opera.
I worked in a garage. I’m very mechanical.
I loved double-shifting my old Alfa Romeo Spider down three gears to take a corner fast.
Everyone is ordinary in the final analysis.
Highland Ethiopian culture is very sophisticated, very formal and very considerate. No one of grace would ever condescend or look down on anyone. The lowliest peasant would be treated very well.
There’s a highly developed sense of respect and accommodation. People talk about using “the Ethiopian model” for coexistence between Muslims and Christians.
The same impulse that made me want to be a doctor made me a restaurateur. The word “restaurant” comes from the root “to restore.” It’s about making someone feel good.
People are hungry—they need a meal, but also they need to be warmly greeted and treated well.
If you do it right, people feel comforted, connected.
I tell doctors, “We take care of a lot of people, and hardly anyone dies in our care.”
As the amount of money spent on the average kitchen remodel goes up, people cook less than ever before.
I can’t bear to volunteer for the city schools anymore. It’s beyond depressing; it breaks my heart.
If it took $1 trillion a year to make sure every kid in the nation got educated, that’s what I would do. Screw everything else.
Joy comes from simple things: my daughter, who’s 5; getting something right; Pablo Neruda’s poetry.
That’s what life is, beauty and sadness.
